unBOLIVIAble

Bolivia, what I now lovingly refer to as the hidden gem of South America. I say this because I mean really, who do you know that goes to Bolivia? Am I right or am I right? But then you go there and it will literally take your breath away (pun intended). It’s this gorgeous city tucked away in a valley surrounded by immense mountains that is at 11,000 feet at its lowest point. So sure breathing was difficult for a few days, but we quickly recovered with no altitude sickness besides exhaustion, nailed it.

Bolivia, let’s talk about it. Man oh man. So you fly there, first going through 4 immigrations, I mean that’s if your us and booked the cheapest flights possible so from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile to Iqique, Chile, to La Paz. It was really quite the treat because we indulged in some Cinnabon and Starbucks at the Santiago airport, well deserved since we woke up at 3:00am okay? So cool your judgments, punk. So anyway, you fly over it and there are just insane mountains covered in snow, like Mount Rainier times a thousand because there are so many Mount Rainiers and their way taller and also they’re not Mount Rainier…anyway I don’t know where I was going with that. And then you see tons of these rivers and valleys and sand dunes and you’re just like, what, where am I!? And then you land and drive from the airport to La Paz with the nicest taxi driver you’ve ever met who stops to let you take a photo of your first glimpse of La Paz, truly incredible. Miles and miles and thousands and thousands of brick houses that dot the mountains all surrounding La Paz. La Paz is interesting because the wealthier live lower and closer to downtown and the higher you ascend in the city, the poorer it gets. This is interesting because in the United States the wealthy typically live high up where all the good views are, but this is not the case in La Paz. It's really because the higher the altitude, the younger people tend to pass away due to the strain on one's body from not having enough oxygen. This is why the rich build their homes in the valley where the altitude is lower. Just a fascinating side note for you.

La Paz reminded me a ton of Ecuador so naturally I was insta-in love. There are the most beautiful indigenous people dressed in intricate outfits with full skirts, top hats, alpaca leg warmers, etc. They carry these insanely heavy loads just on their backs like complete bad asses. I love when women are just nailing it all over the world. So our first couple of days we got our feet wet in La Paz and discovered all of the architecture, the cathedrals, and the vegetarian restaurants that the city had to offer us (seriously so many vegetarian restaurants, but more on that later). We also planned our trip to the Salt Flats or the Salar de Uyuni.

First, the vegetarian restaurants were great! We went to this one with the most incredible fresh squeezed juice ever and I got a quesa-freaking-dilla! WHAT. I was obviously happy as a clam. Eric even got Pad Thai! We both unfortunately had lost our appetites at this point because of the high altitude, but we made our best efforts to eat a decent amount of foods we have been missing. The other one we found was a vegetarian lunch buffet. Okay so basically Eric and I are a huge mess whenever we walk into a restaurant in South America. So you seat yourself, which is confusing enough because it just feels so wrong to do that. I used to work as a hostess and I would be livid whenever a family sat themselves because it’s all an art to seating people while not upsetting servers, but maybe they had just been traveling in South America, who knew? So we get in and we circle the restaurant looking for a place to sit and finally find a place and sit only to realize everyone had trays and it was a buffet so we needed to get the food first, and then sit. Fail. We go up and get all of this food that we literally had no idea what any of it was, thankfully not having to worry if we were accidently eating meat, but to this day we have no idea what we ate. Oh except the broccoli soup, which I hate broccoli more than anything, but was surprisingly delicious! We also had this corn that was probably the grossest corn I have ever eaten, and I love corn so it was extremely upsetting, plus I don’t want to offend anyone by not finishing my meal, but I really had to put my foot down on this one. Anyway, besides that we had a blast being a mess and eating as the locals do! Rather, the local vegetarians? Hm.

Okay so to the salt flats, because who really cares what vegetarian restaurants we ate at? SALT FLATS OMGOSH. Quick, book your flights to Bolivia to see these suckers because they are just absolutely breathtaking (once again pun intended because they’re even higher altitude than La Paz! Tired of that pun? Sorry I’m not sorry). Just imagine miles upon miles (or kilometers rather…) upon miles upon kilometers of the whitest salt ever in these hexagon patterns just absolutely beautiful and huge and I just have no words to tell you how incredible it was. Not only were the salt flats incredible, but we got to drive around in a jeep checking out all of these amazing sights. We got to see the salt flats and the process of the whole salt business. We got to see incredible lagoons that sit at the base of volcanos that are insanely gorgeous and BONUS there are flamingos in the lagoons! FLAMINGOS!? Pink ones! In Bolivia? Where it’s freezing? Who knew!? Literally, who did? Because I didn’t. I thought flamingos were more hot weather kinda guys and gals, but apparently they don’t mind the freezing, hurricane winds in Southern Bolivia. I’m talking freezing people, I could barely feel my face after our 2 day excursion, but it’s alright because I stole Eric’s jacket, naturally I was freezing and he was 100% fine. What’s with that? Anyway, we had this great guide Gonzalez who told us all about the salar and oh we went to this place called fish island, which just had hundreds of Cactu (called Cactu not Cactus in Bolivia) that were 9 meters tall (quick convert meters to feet! It’s a challenge right? Now you see what we’re working with here, you know metric system, the better of the systems). So the salar is neat because it formed "as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes" (thanks Wikipedia) so there’s all of this fossilized coral and these random islands in the middle with cactus and it’s all because it's dried up lakes! Neat huh? We also visited this salt hotel, which had a ton of flags all over one area and guess what flag was missing? That’s right, for once some redneck didn’t bring an American flag to South America! What!? So neither of us are patriotic at all, but what?! Even Canada had a damn flag up, although it was tiny, which I thought was hilarious and representative of cute little Canada…just kidding enough Canada jokes…for now. Okay but seriously. Eric and I decided we have to go back just to bring the American flag, I mean come on, we need to represent! Brazil had like 3 flags up! They’re putting us to shame here people!

Okay so salt flats were incredible, but cold. We also got to spend the night in a salt hotel! Which is neat because our beds were just made out of salt! Oh also we had to take an 11 hour overnight bus to get there, which of all of the insanely long, developing country busses I’ve taken, this was by far the nicest! They served dinner AND breakfast, hot damn! Plus my seat reclined sort of and oh yeah! We even got to change busses somewhere in the middle of Bolivia at 2:00am. Boy was that a fun one! But seriously, besides that little hiccup, super nice bus! And then we got in to Uyuni (where the salt flats are) at like 8:30am and just plowed on through to start our tour at 10:30am. Needless to say, after our 3 day trip from La Paz, we took a day off to sleep.

But after our day of rest, what did we do? Well, I’m sorry to say this to the Thomas, Conant, and Spishak families as I know all of you would have freaked out had we told you that we were doing this, but we took a little mountain bike trip down what is called “Death Road”. Hmm, don’t like the sound of that mom? You always told me to tell you after I do scary things, this is after! We survived! So what this is, is basically a 36 mile mountain bike ride down a really scary, but gorgeous mountain. You start out at La Cumbre, which is like 14,000-15,000 feet (breathtaking…hahaha just kidding this time, unless you laughed, in which case I wasn’t kidding) and then you bike down a road until you get to the actual dirt road. There are just huge rocks and dirt and loose gravel and you just sign up to ride down this crazy road with a huge cliff on the side that you can probably easily fall off, but like I said, we didn’t so no worries! Let me tell you though, I was about to pee my pants a couple times and on the whole bus ride there. I am a terrible, TERRIBLE, bike rider. Seriously, who signs up for this when they’re as bad as me at bike riding? The trick is, is that it was my idea in the first place. Everyone had raved about this trip and so we just had to do it. We are so glad we did because we just had a blast! I was the slowest person in the group, but you know you win some you lose some. I figured it would be safer for me to go at my own pace, so whatever sure my butt is in serious pain today and my hands are like claws from squeezing the brakes and I somehow got a huge bruise on my upper right bicep, my forearms are in a lot of discomfort, and whatever I’ll never mountain bike again, it was worth every second! The views were…wait for it…breathtaking! I couldn’t help myself on that one, but for reals, we descended into the most beautiful jungle ever where you could swear George was living with gorillas and orangutans because it was that kind of jungle. Just beautiful and thank god we didn’t fall off the cliff because I loved the jungle, but I didn’t want to die there you know what I’m saying? I basically alternated between thinking “omgosh, I’m going to fall of this cliff and my mom’s going to kill me” and “I really have to pee” and “ow ow ow, this is killing my hands”. At the end I was so proud of myself though for really conquering a huge fear of mine and had an absolute blast.

Another weird thing that happened was this market called the Witch's Market. Now, I want to note that I did not see a single witch (hhwhhitch) during this walk, but we saw lots of shrunken dead llamas. For reals, it was disgusting, but don't you worry because I took a picture for your viewing pleasure! We also went to this museum that was one of the best I've been to, called the Coca museum. What's coca you ask? Coca is basically cocaine! Well I mean not at its simplest form, but once you do a whole bunch of chemically things to it, it can become cocaine. Anyway, people in Bolivia chew it (think chewing tobacco, but leaves, are tobacco leaves? Hm, I don't do drugs clearly) and even though the US was like we're making coca illegal blah blah blah typical US fashion, Bolivia's like whatever we're doing it and so there's a museum and they chew it on the daily. Also fun fact: coca is still put into Coca-Cola (see the name there? that's a good trick!) and there are several coca processing plants in the US. The last thing, I swear this is so damn long, but there's this prison in La Paz called San Pedro Prison. This is by far the weirdest part about La Paz. It's a prison that is basically a neighborhood in La Paz. Prisoners can buy larger spaces to live in and their wives and children can live there as well, coming and going as they please. The trick is, is that most of the prisoners are locked up due to drug related crimes, but inside the prison many of the prisoners still make cocaine right out of their cells and sell it to tourists and people on the outside. Tourists can pay money (60 USD!! OUTRAGEOUS) to go into the prison and see all of this, but we felt a little uncomfortable going in to look at people living their lives, this is similar to the reason why we didn't go into the favelas in Brazil. These weird tourist activities seem a bit voyeuristic to me. In other news, there's supposedly a great book out about San Pedro Prison, so I might just read that to fulfill my interest.

We truly had an unBOLIVIAble (seriously the puns are killing you right?!) time in Bolivia. Book your flights ASAP, omgosh but don’t go without me, how rude. But on to the next and keeping with the high altitudes from here on out, we’re on to Quito and Cotacachi! I am THRILLED to be returning to this wonderful place. On our way though we got to have a little adventure in Lima, Peru! We had an 11 hour layover in Peru and so what the heck, we left the airport and ventured around the capital city of Lima. Not to mention we got the best Ceviche I’ve ever had, albeit I didn’t touch the octopus or squid that were raw in there (Eric ate it like a champ) and we also got this Peruvian dish called Causa, which was a mashed yellow potato dumpling with various ceviche toppings, one had a super familiar taste and turned out to have an olive sauce on it, but not olive oil, like legit kalamata olives mashed into a sauce! Nom nom nom. We started our day at the historical center of Lima and wandered around and took pictures of old buildings and cathedrals, let’s be real we do this at least once in every city. And then we randomly came upon a parade of sorts in front of the government building. I think the president was standing outside watching. There were military sorts on horses with swords, it sounds bizarre, but seriously was awesome! Like what the heck? I don’t even know how we got so lucky! We then ended our day at the beach watching surfers and marveling in how lucky we are to be having the best six week adventure ever. The end of our day was kind of silly because we flagged down a taxi who decided he didn't want to pay the airport fee and instead dropped us off in some sketchy ally near the airport and pointed towards the airport, and so we went.

Anyway, this has been long as per usual, but I just have so much to say okay!? Also, we finally figured out the hot showers. I told a few of you about my issue with cold showers because our hostel was about 10 degrees below 0 and I refused to take a cold shower because I was already so cold. Seriously, Bolivia you are cold. On our last night I finally turned on the shower and to my pleasant surprise, there was steaming water coming out. I leaped in and did a little victory dance. Now I’m clean as a whistle (what does that even mean?) and I got my dread locks all cleaned up. Not actual dread locks, but I swear if I kept not washing my hair that was where things were going.

And finally, a picture for your viewing pleasure! I was feeling pretty thirsty on the salt flats...

So on to Quito and to the next adventure! Week 5, come at us!

xoxo,

Mandi & Eric

Are we in Paris or Buenos Aires?

Okay wow, I know you've been on the edge of your seats waiting for the Argentina update and I totally left you hanging for far too long, so my apologies senoras and senors. We made it safely to Bolivia, so I am writing to you from 11,000 feet in La Paz, making it the world's highest de facto capital city, Quito being the highest legal capital. Cool huh!? Ugh, but I got ahead of myself because this blog is about Argentina NOT Bolivia...so let's cool it on Bolivia and dive right in to Argentina stories!

First thing's first. Buenos Aires looks like a mix between Paris (although let me be real with you, I've never set foot in Paris, but I really like the movie Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson and plus I've opened a book so I obviously have seen photos of Paris, anyway...) and New York (although New York has no cool buildings like Paris, but seriously there's a section in downtown that you could swear you were in Time's Square, big light up billboards and a Pepsi ball that rotates and lights up). It's a beautiful city steeped in history so our first day there we spent the whole day just romping around the city checking out insanely old churches and government buildings. I also have a little thing for Evita (more specifically, Eva Peron), I find her story so fascinating and she hails from Buenos Aires so naturally we found the famous balcony she spoke on and also went to the cemetery she's buried in!

Okay so that sounds creepy, going to a cemetery, but the cemeteries in Argentina are incredible! They have huge headstones like HUGE, like mini-churches that whole families are buried in. Some are super creepy because the doors are broken and you can just pop your head in and see caskets and one we could see bones, EEK! Seriously, we probably over stepped our boundaries there, but we were enjoying freaking ourselves out. I personally thought that Halloween would be a fun time to go poke around the cemetery...I digress. So we saw Eva Peron's grave and people still leave roses there, it's so great, she's amazing.

We also tried out a TON of cafes! You know why? Because of medialunas. MEDIAFREAKINGLUNAS. The best thing to ever happen to anyone. They're croissants, but better because they put some deliciously sugary topping on it and it just melts in your mouth and pair that with a cafe con leche and your set for the afternoon. We loved them so much, well I'm pretty sure I was more gung-ho about the cafes than Eric, but he loved them too in the end. I've actually successfully turned him into a coffee drinker, sort of. I mean come on, he grew up in Seattle and never drank coffee!? I'm proud to say that he's succumbed, or at least while we're in South America. Anyway, so cafes are everywhere, much as I imagine them to be in Paris! So we lounged around outside and drank coffee and ate more croissants than a normal person should, but come on they were INCREDIBLE.

We also wine tasted! Remember how we missed out on Mendoza? Well to make up for our failed trip we booked a wine tasting with this amazing place called Anuva Wines, started by a guy from none other than, Portland, Oregon! Say what!? So he came to Argentina and fell in love with Lourdes on day 2 of his trip, and well, he never left. So they did this amazing wine tasting with 1 sparkling, 1 white, and 3 reds (2 Malbecs of course, did you have to ask?). They paired each of them with food, SO GOOD. We got this amazing spinach empanada, sorbet, homemade chocolate truffles (DARK CHOCOLATE OM NOM NOM), and some bread and cheeses of course. We were living it up. We also met the nicest people at the tasting! It was a blast to say the least. We also maybe, kinda, sorta bought an entire case of wine (12 bottles = free shipping), it had to be done. If you're extra nice and extra good you might be able to get in on that action, but we're saving one sparkling to pop when we move into our SF apartment. Okay I'm really rambling here. Let's get back to the stories.

So wine tasting was obviously magical, we had the best time. We also learned to Tango! That's right. Eric and I took a Tango class. It was the most fun ever! It's so fun to do new things together even after dating for almost 4 years. We loved it. Okay and I'll be honest, I'm terrible at following. He was really patient with me, but I think we need more practice. I had to close my eyes so I would stop trying to lead. Anyway, we had so much fun! Our teachers were great and there was such a diverse group of dancers. Then, after our Tango class we got beers and watched a LIVE TANGO ORCHESTRA! It was seriously the coolest thing ever. We were both just in a trance amazed at how incredible and how normal that was for Argentinians. All of these people showed up to watch and just Tango the night away! These people were amazing at it too, and just so adorable, just couples came to dance together and enjoy the music. It was by far one of my favorite nights of the trip yet. The orchestra even had 4 accordion players! Accordions! How silly. And they really took themselves seriously, it was awesome. Plus violins and cellos, it was so beautiful and intense. Needless to say we might try to find ourselves a Tango class or two when we return to the states, we just had too much fun!

What else, well we had the most amazing pizza! Buenos Aires has incredible pizza that's like deep dish with a ton of cheese. They're known for this one called a Fugazetta, which is with tons of onions and mozzarella cheese. So we went to this restaurant that is where all the locals go (you know, can't be seen as tourists...which reminds me that everyone in Brazil thought I was Brazilian! Who knew!?) and got a Fugazetta and it was amazing. I mean, I love all pizza so I'm not a tough critic, but still.

Lastly, we almost got mugged! Buenos Aires was probably not the safest city ever, but seriously we were just wandering along a busy street getting to this pizza place and we both notice these three kids following us, keeping up with us, etc. I was like woah there and I think so was Eric so when we got to our street that we were going to turn on we veered off to the side and the kids kind of decided not to mug us, but one kid still asked for money and we just ignored them until they scattered. So it was the closest I've ever come to getting mugged. I was very prepared to not give these 17 year olds any money, but rather a stern Spanish talking too, because let's be real, you're 17!! Stop being a criminal sheesh. But anyway, we were pretty scared after that, but don't worry because we're alive and we're fine and we made it to the pizza place! And then we ran home after, I mean not literally, but basically ran.

Let's see, my brain is having trouble here since I'm so high up, there's less oxygen you know? But I think those are the main highlights. Oh yeah, so I really love dogs (obviously, I mean Muppet come on), but anyway there was this HORRIBLE dog that would bark every morning nonstop until we begrudgingly would be forced to wake up and get out of bed. The bright side was that we woke up and got to have dulce de leche right at 9:00am! What a great way to start the day, with dessert. In my opinion, we should do that in the states. I mean a little dessert never killed anyone...Tonight we leave on an 11-12 hour bus ride over to the Salar de Uyuni to check out the incredible Salt Flats. We're beyond excited, but we'll be out of internet land until Friday so don't expect to hear from us until then. Also, our internet blows at this hostel so if you don't hear from us in general, we're probably still alive so not to worry :)

Oh gosh, you need a picture! Sorry! Here's a picture of us on a little trip to a place called La Boca. So La Boca is where the famous futbol stadium is, La Bombonera and also is where the first settlement was in Buenos Aires so it's super historical, and we're history nerds so anyway we had to go, right? Okay this was one of the weirdest places I've ever been. It was a tourist TRAP. The buildings were neat and all different colors, but there was just weird Tango dancers everywhere trying to get you to watch them and then pay money or take pictures with them and it was just so bizarre. So La Boca is also pretty unsafe, so we didn't really bring much with us in order to avoid getting mugged and at the end of the main road there was a guy literally telling people not to go any further because it was too unsafe. How funny is that?! I think it's funny, my mom and grandparents might not, but it was pretty silly. Don't worry you guys, we did NOT go further! But it was the weirdest place. So I leave you with a picture that we took there, in front of Buenos Aires' flat iron building haha, just kidding kind of. I think you had to be there. Why weren't you?

xoxo,

Mandi & Eric

Real: Pronounced Hay-Ice

Hola amigos! Sorry about the delay in the Rio blog, let's be real, we loved Rio so much that we just didn't have time for internet really. But I will tell you that I'm writing to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina (even though I don't want to mix blog posts and getcha confused), and I just have to tell you something because I want to shout it from the rooftops, I just ate dulce de leche on my delicious slice of soft baguette for breakfast...DULCE DE LECHE ON BREAD FOR BREAKFAST. Buenos Aires is apparently known for their dulce de leche, so sue me if I eat it everyday for every meal until Sunday, because after this breakfast I will be doing that...jealous? I would be too, it's alright to be jealous. Trader Joe's (TJ's) has some pretty good dulce de leche though so now if you're craving it, I'd recommend going out and getting some and putting it on TJ's vanilla ice cream...oh damn now I'm jealous.

Moving on to Rio though...enough about dulce de leche...for now. Are you wondering about the title of this blog? Well, to start you need to know that the money they use in Brasil is called the Real, this is pronounced "Hay-Ice", I am not kidding, this is a fact. WHAT. I know, it's the weirdest thing ever. More on Portuguese to come.

Rio, oh geez le sigh. It's incredible and beautiful and will take your breath away with its magic. You fly over it and you just can't believe it's real life. There are these huge green mound hills that are everywhere and are more beautiful than any picture you can ever take and beaches that are the whitest sand and bluest water with huge waves and it's just unreal. We stayed at a great hostel! We've been nailing our hostels so far, all of them have been nice (there have been 5 total now so that's kind of a lot to nail!) But this time we stayed in a dorm, bleh. Rio's expensive so we bit the bullet and old school, bunk bed style, slept in a room with all men. Talk about bleh haha just kidding kind of. Anyway, it wasn't that bad, I exaggerate. And I digress.

We went to the beach a couple of days here, we chose Ipanema both days because we fell in love with the beach there. Copacabana is great, I mean everyone's heard of it blah blah, but Ipanema had incredibly huge waves (we're talking 6 footers here, which may not seem big to you, but like to swim in those, it's pretty hardcore alright?) and it was also less crowded so it was more enjoyable. It's neat, what you do is you go to a guy on the beach who has chairs and umbrellas and you rent them for 10 USD. It's such a great deal! So we made friends with the guy who rented them to us and went back to him the second day. He even asked us to come back a third day, but we were pretty sunburnt let's be honest, so we had to restrict our beach time. Anyway so Eric almost killed me in a wave on the second day, but luckily I made it. Rude. It's hilarious though, you hang out on the beach and all these guys come by with various food and drink items and just yell it, like you're at a freaking baseball game or something. The second day we got adventurous and bought these things called "Globos", which we still aren't sure what they are, but think chips and funions, but without much flavor? Idk. Our favorite was this guy that would come by and to get people's attention he'd just yell "WOAH!" and then say whatever he was selling. It was a had to be there kinda thing, but still hilarious. Also they were all selling this "acai" pronounced, "ah-sai-ee" and so our new fun thing was to walk around and whenever we saw an "acai" sign we'd say it like the guys on the beach. Okay you probably had to be there to understand where those last two stories were going, sorry...I'm not sorry...lo siento no lo siento.

In other news, we did two major touristy things, the first went really well, the second went horribly, but you win some, you lose some. The first was that we took the tram up to the top of Sugarloaf mountain (check it out on google if you're not sure what that is, it's one of those green hill mounds I was describing earlier), it has the MOST INCREDIBLE VIEW EVER. Seriously, it's amazing. After a full day at the beach we popped over to watch the sunset at Sugarloaf. Seriously, we nailed that. We caught it at literally the most perfect time, sure we ran some people over running to get from the smaller mountain to the second tram to get to the tip top of Sugarloaf, but whatever details...we were excited okay? We get kinda pushy when we're excited. But Sugarloaf was gorgeous. We got to see the Christ the Redeemer statue from it and it was just chilling up there looking all elegant and huge and then we saw it get lit up and then saw all the city lights coming out and it was just a wonderful thing to do, highly recommend if you're ever in Rio.

The second touristy thing we did was go to the Christ the Redeemer (Corcovada). So here's what happened. We decided to go our last day because what an epic way to end our time in Rio, right? WRONG. We went and what happened? The computers were down, the internet? We're still unsure, no one really speaks English and neither of us really speak Portuguese so we're still not exactly sure what was happening. Side note: Portuguese is crazy! They pronounce everything so ridiculously that it is in fact, not AT ALL like Spanish. Although when reading it, it looks a lot like Spanish, but good luck understanding anything anyone is saying ever. But thank goodness we're back to Spanish land. ANYWAY back to the story.. They told us to go buy them online, so we go to an internet cafe to do so and then find out you can't buy the same day? Then they tell us it's sold out? Seriously, it was a mess. So then we go to these sketchy ladies (once again doing one of those things everyone tells you not to, but whatever we're still alive to tell the story) who were selling private van tickets up there. We're like well geez I mean we leave tomorrow, we have to go somehow, so we do it! We buy the tickets and take a sketchy van (I'm sorry, we took 6 SEPARATE VANS, seriously we got transferred in and out of vans it was silly) up to the top. I mean whatever, we got to the top, but we were pretty disappointed because the train that takes you up there (the sold out deal) seemed pretty awesome, whatever we're not still upset about it or anything... Anyway, note to self: buy tickets ahead of time. But then we get there and it's cloudy and foggy and YOU CANNOT EVEN SEE JESUS. Literally, picture everyone up there sitting on the platform deal around Christ the Redeemer statue and the fog is clouding him so hard that you can barely even tell he's there, and then whenever the clouds clear for even just a minute, everyone cheers. It's the funniest thing ever. It actually didn't turn out so bad though because that was such a silly experience. So we got some really cloudy, occasionally clear, pictures of the statue and us in front of it. Talk about timing, sheesh. So you know, you win some, you lose some. We still had a blast, and since Sugarloaf was so awesome, we weren't too heartbroken about it.

Let's see what else, on my birthday it was gross weather (nailed it) so we wandered around the Centro, it's super old and historical and crazy. There are these markets where they sell all these obviously illegal or stolen or fake goods like New York, but you don't have to pack it all up in a second, the police couldn't care less. And there are just these insanely old churches that are gorgeous and you can go inside, and then Eric's favorite church, this dome-like structure, he actually hated it, it's a pretty ugly building and he loves old churches so I think he was disappointed that it was so ugly. Let's be real, it looked like a weird prison from outside, but gorgeous stained glass on the inside! We also walked around this amazing Lagoon one day, think Greenlake, but tropical and bigger. There were even swan boats you could ride around on, we didn't do that don't worry. We also went to Rio's botanical gardens, which are HUGE and gorgeous and tropical and Amazon rainforest-esque. Also, for my birthday Eric surprised me with two nights in a hotel in Copacabana! The hotel was great and the showers were HOT. I just lived in that shower, not actually, but basically. It was such a wonderful birthday present and such a relief to get away from the bunkbeds for a couple nights. What I'm saying is, Eric is the best guy ever and I'm just a lucky lady!

The best was our last night. We had been having a lot of bland food because we're really struggling with being vegetarians here, all people eat is meat I swear. So we'd been just cooking pasta etc. Actually one day we saw all these people eating these empanada looking treats (and I LOVE empanadas, OMGOSH) and I was just like, Eric let's just go eat that, throw caution to the wind, who cares if we get sick!? So we ate one with cheese and it was quite delightful! And bonus! We didn't get sick, phew, street food will not kill us! Anyway, so our last night we went to this amazing restaurant that was basically a treehouse, it was the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been to, we sat outside on these awesome old wood tables among these gorgeous trees, we felt like we were transported to the Amazon rainforest. We ate the most amazing dinner ever, which completely made up for the pretty terrible birthday dinner I had, so this became my birthday dinner instead. We ate Tilapia and tropical fish with amazing Amazonian spices and had fried bananas with chocolate sauce and ice cream for dessert and drank these incredible tropical fruit mixed drinks. Oh man, I will forever dream of that meal. Plus we got a gorgeous view of the city. What a way to end our trip, that's for sure.

Okay this is getting long, I realize that, but seriously we're in love with Rio. I'm already planning our return trip for the 2016 Olympics. Who's coming? We have a great hostel to stay at. We made friends with all the people who worked there (Perez was our fave, aw Perez, he was so sweet and great) so let's do it people! But bring lots of bug spray because for real, I have the most bugbites ever and I'm basically itching my skin off and I couldn't sleep one night because I was convinced I heard a mosquito flying around my head so I obviously hid under my covers until I was like sweating because it's really hot and humid. It was brutal. Eric's better with his, he has more self control than I do when it comes to itching bugbites. Anyway, oh also Futbol is huge there, like people are not exaggerating. The city stops when there's a futbol game on TV and everyone just watches on the streets. Also, people drink a ton in Rio. And they do this neat thing where you get a really large beer and then you get little glasses so it's like a pitcher kind of, but in a beer bottle and you just all share around the table, it's really great. Anyway, we miss Rio already, but we are so excited to start exploring Buenos Aires today. I absolutely love Evita the musical so today I'm on a hunt for Eva Peron's grave and the famous balcony that she gave speeches from. So enough of this, sorry it got so long and rambly...we're off to explore the "Paris" of South America, all we're going to eat is dulce de leche and all we're going to drink is wine! Just kidding, kinda of. And now to end, here's a picture of us at the top of Sugarloaf mountain at the sunset!

Ciao!

Mandi & Eric

Ps. I'd like to dedicate this blog to the amazing, the incredible, the beautiful, and the woman with the most perfect hair Katie O'Brien, my mentor and best boss ever from admissions. This blog is to Katie and her FIANCE Ben :) I am so freaking happy for you two I could die. I also shamelessly just watched your proposal video and majorly teared up. YOU NAILED IT BEN! Weeeeeeeeeeee! So happy!

It's Chilly in Chile

Been sitting around wondering if we made it safely to Chile? Well, good news...we did! After a 9 hour flight to Brazil from New York and then a 4 hour flight from Brazil to Santiago, we landed in Santiago, Chile. We then proceeded to do all of the wrong things. We didn't have a black or blue ink pen so we had to borrow one from the reciprocity fee lady, she was nice, we were embarrassed. Now, picture us both completely exhausted, shell shocked, and wishing we had looked up the exchange rate of US Dollars to Chilean Pesos BEFORE we got to the actual country, plus being up for at least 24 hours, and you get us, saying yes to a sketchy taxi, you know, like the first thing people tell you NOT to do. Well anyway, then we got totally ripped off on our taxi ride, after agreeing to an overpriced ride, we then did the math in our heads and found that indeed we did not need to pay the man almost $40 US Dollars. We're still trying to get over this mistake, so cut us some slack here people.

Anyway, the first 2 days, it was pouring rain, I'm talking torrential downpour. I'm talking, streets became rivers (literally) and rivers became rapids. So, what do you do in a foreign country with no pink Hunter rainboots (I know, I'm in South America, I obviously wouldn't bring fancy rainboots, but still...) and a shitty 4-year-old rain jacket that truly makes me more wet than keeps water out? Well you run around like lunatic Americans with soaking wet everything leaping across the rivers (which prior to this we think, were streets) and laughing with Chileans who were literally picking each other up to make it over the rivers (again, streets). So let's be real, we were pretty lame the first couple of days because we were in a state of shock from the amount of rain happening outside. We did go to a museum called the Museum of Memory and Human Rights and learned all about Pinochet and his dictatorship and the mass tortures and killings that happened in Chile in the 70s and 80s for 16 years. 16 YEARS. It was a terrible, awful, disgusting, horrible thing, but we both learned so much and it was a really impressive and educational museum trip.

Our socks and shoes soaked, we then found out that the pass through the Andes was CLOSED. Do you know what this means?! No, why would you? It means our trip to Mendoza was CANCELLED. It means that all of the torrential downpouring in the city, transfers to snow up in the mountains and makes the windy, curvy, probably dangerous to start, road that we were going to take to get to the beautiful land of Malbec, Argentinian wines, more dangerous and also closed. So there's that. The bright side of this truly tragic situation was that we got to travel to the beautiful Chilean coast and see the beautiful Kelsey Gibbs in a town called Valparaiso. Valparaiso was by far our favorite part of our week in Chile because let me get real with you, Santiago is lame.

So Valparaiso is on the Chilean coast as I just stated, geez stay with me here, and it's just absolutely unreal it's so pretty. Imagine San Francisco with bigger hills and more colorful houses and you get Valparaiso. Plus you get Vina del Mar and some other cute little coastal cities that Kelsey took us too that I now have forgotten the names of. Here we frolicked around town drinking Piscos (the national Chilean drink), climbing giant sand dunes, checking out Pablo Neruda's house (famous poet, check him out), walking through open air art museums, taking crazy buses and fancy metros (subways), watching the sunset over the ocean, and just overall having the BEST time with Kelsey. Valparaiso is a wonderful town and we loved it. Not to mention we stayed in the cutest hostel EVER that just so happened to be near an adorable cafe called Cafe Jardin where we could get incredible mocaccinos with delicious little baby cookies that they really should've given us more of.

We begrudgingly left Kelsey and the beautiful Chilean coast for smoggy Santiago for our last day and a half. Luckily, it had stopped raining long enough for us to actually enjoy Santiago and climb a little mountain to get some incredible sights of the city and the Andes. Here we met some guys from Austin, Texas, who were super strange, very braggy, but had gone to Easter Island, which obviously we're extremely jealous of, but whatever they were braggy and lame. I mean come on, Texas. Just kidding, but seriously...kind of. We found out that although the neighborhood we're staying in seems safe and is cute, it also turned out to be extremely expensive and the hip place to stay...whoops. We accidentally spent $40 US dollars on our first dinner so last night we decided to make spaghetti to make up for our expensive mistake. Oh Santiago, how we will not miss you at all... 

Okay our two best stories: the man we met at a restaurant on the coast who told me I have big feet and said some racist things about rice to Kelsey. Let's get one thing straight here, I wear size 6 1/2, that's small! This guy was so inappropriate, but we decided that he was probably drunk from piscos, or at least we hoped he was or else we probably would've left more offended. But seriously, this guy was out of control. He wanted to give Eric and I his phone number in case we got into trouble in Brazil. What a weirdo. Second best story, showers. There have been many a cold shower...there have been screaming and jumping up and down and mentally preparing ourselves for showers. It's real intense. I think I had some excess soap on my body just for a few days because it was too cold to wash off and I was like, meh, I'm in South America...

Well this has been long enough already, if you made it here then WOW I am sincerely impressed, you're a true friend or extremely bored, I'm not sure which. Off to Brazil in the morning (4:45am to be exact)!

Ciao!

Mandi and Eric

Ps. This post is dedicated to Laura & Amelia, my birthday buddies, happy birthday today to Laura and tomorrow to Meels on Wheels! Love you Geminis!

Pps. Here's a picture of us from Valparaiso so that you know a computer didn't type this and we really are alive...I'd be really impressed if a computer can type how I speak, but whatever anyway details...